Product Reviews

With both the high- and low-end of image processing covered by Photoshop and Photoshop Elements respectively, it takes a lot of nerve to offer a viable alternative. But Pixelmator, with its fresh, modern interface and innovative filter set, does just that.

Its tool set mirrors that of Photoshop, with brushes, softening and sharpening tools, marquee, magic wand and lasso selections, eraser, eye dropper and rubber stamp. It works with multiple layers, which replicate Photoshop's blending modes; unlike Elements, Pixelmator allows layer masks to be used to hide parts of a layer selectively.

Hue/Saturation, Levels and Brightness and Contrast dialogs are almost exactly like their Photoshop equivalents and the basic filters - Unsharp Mask, Blur and so on - work in a way that will be familiar.

But it's the extra range of filters that will really get people interested: there are tools here not found in Photoshop or elsewhere. Distortion filters include Bump, Twirl, Pinch, Circular Wrap and more, all with an interface innovation: a centre marker is linked to the palette by a flexible 'string', and can be dragged anywhere in the image to set the point about which the filter operates. Intriguingly, this marker can be dragged outside the image, even outside Pixelmator's interface entirely: in Photoshop this can only be achieved by zooming out of the image so that some background area is visible.

A set of Stylize filters add edge and glow effects, among others; and a set of Tile filters create multiple repeating patterns in a variety of ways. Again, the chained centre marker makes setting the rotation point not just easy, but fun. The Generator filters will be of interest, turning out checkerboards and stripes to order,

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as well as star shine, halos and sunbeams. The ability to drag the centre marker out of the window is very useful here: frequently we won't want the sun itself visible, just the beams. Being able to move the centre right outside the image area makes this process easier to manage.

There's also a set of Transition filters - Copy Machine, in which a vertical glow moves back and forth to reveal or hide the layer; Flash, Ripple and Swipe; and the useful Page Curl, which can roll an image right back on itself to create a truly 3D effect. In all these Transition filters, there's a Time slider to adjust the strength or the randomness of the effect.

With its translucent palettes and big, chunky tool icons that zoom when selected, Pixelmator looks clean and appealing. Its built-in photobrowser is fast in operation, as is the entire program: it can open multi-layered Photoshop files faster than Photoshop, which is indeed an accolade.

Sophisticated in design and expansive in use, there are some areas where Pixelmator remains as yet unfinished. Changing brush size has to be done through a dialog to build a new brush or edit an existing one; and even at 0% hardness, brushes remain hard with the faintest of soft edges - about the equivalent of 80% hardness in Photoshop.

There's a Refine Selection palette, equivalent to Photoshop's Refine Edges; but without a preview, setting the Feather, Border, Smooth and Contract amounts is pure guesswork. There's a Replace Color dialog, but no eyedropper here to sample colours from the image; instead, they have to be chosen from a standard colour wheel.

A few interface problems irritate here, too. For example, Photoshop users will commonly use Command-H to hide selection edges; but it's not implemented here, instead hiding the application.

With multiple undo, a good set of adjustment dialogs and a slick interface, Pixelmator provides tremendous power at a fraction of the cost of Photoshop Elements. But there are still a lot of rough edges and unfinished features in this initial release; the chances are, though, that a developer as innovative as this will produce updates on a regular basis. For now, Pixelmator is enjoyable, incredibly fast and very powerful. It can only be a matter of time before it matures into a truly indispensible application.